


Five Times They Didn't (and One That They Did)

by IWasHereMomentsAgo



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: M/M, but there IS a happy ending i promise, okay, so i'm not tagging this as major character death because woah woah woah sweet child of mine, there's a happy ending, though in some of these drabbles royston and hal may not um. make it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 17:33:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3298397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IWasHereMomentsAgo/pseuds/IWasHereMomentsAgo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apparently destiny can only be thwarted a number of times (or, a collection of drabbles wherein Royston and Hal fail spectacularly at relationshipping in various different universes. Until they don't).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times They Didn't (and One That They Did)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to Embla for reading this through for me!

1. 

When William had broken the pocket watch, Royston should have seen it for what it was. Time stopped still and the countryside had him back.

It was Hal, really, who had changed it all. The man checked on him under the guise of bringing him food, made sure he went outside, and when Hal read to him Royston felt less closed in by the grass and the hills and all of those damned sheep. He felt less helpless. So in return, Royston told him stories, watched Hal’s eyes light up at mentions of the Basquiat and the Well. The magicians seemed to interest him most of all, and Royston took great delight in showing off for him.

He was falling, and he knew it. 

He never told anyone about the night he went for a walk of his own accord and had stumbled across Hal and the stable boy in the fields. He remembered living in Nevers. He remembered having to hide. He tried to ignore the bitter disappointment blooming in his chest; it could never have happened anyway. Of course it couldn't.

Soon after, Royston got word his exile was over. Hal never asked him to stay.

Though even years later, Royston sometimes found himself regretting not asking Hal to go back with him.

 

2. 

Hal didn’t want to be here. He did not want to be here. He wanted to be anywhere else but here, surrounded by other people who _did_ want to be here, because fighting was an honour Hal couldn't understand.

No one recognised the titles of the books he tried to discuss during their down time, no one knew the small pond just beyond the magician’s dome that he liked to visit - no one really knew what Hal was _doing_ there. _Hal_ didn’t know what he was doing there. But there were very few options for an orphan in Xi’an - especially an orphan who looked Volstovic and to whom it had been very strongly suggested that loyalty to his country ought to be demonstrated lest people get suspicious. Not to mention that apparently he was lucky - at least soldiers were fed. Hal didn’t feel lucky.

They were nice to him, which surprised him, but impatient, which didn’t. They didn’t like to talk about the men they killed, but Hal saw them in his sleep. 

The man with the beard had held eye contact with Hal as he had bled out, the colour of his blood barely visible against his own red uniform but bright and stark against Hal's blue one.

Hal dreamed about him for years.

3.

Royston was careful. Antoinette knew about them, but of course Antoinette knew about them, and she kept quiet and that was what mattered. They were appropriate at work and careful with their plans, and for the first time Royston felt he could commend himself on his discretion; it wasn’t a skill he cared to exercise very often. Erik was less subtle, but as long as Royston ignored the brief looks of confusion or hurt when Royston didn’t return his smiles, they would be fine. Or so Royston had thought.

It was Erik's last day in Volstov when he let Royston know they wouldn’t be seeing each other again. Apparently Royston had been _too_ skilled at not caring, and not skilled enough in ways the heir apparent thought any lover of his ought to be.

He was upset, but he had seen it coming. But he had also seen his arrest coming, so upon Arlemagne's departure from Thremedon Royston had his freedom to comfort him, at least.

  

4.

Hal thought perhaps he could look after his parents, but by the time he caught their sickness they weren’t there to look after him.

Years later, Royston was exiled. No one read to him.

 

5.

Before it heated up with Erik, before Royston had ever met him, there had been a man who worked at the library near the ‘Versity. He had a splash of freckles across his nose and a dreamy expression which kept Royston coming back more times than he ought, regardless of whether he had finished - or even started - his last set of books.

He’d thought about saying something to him; as much as Royston liked to show off at dinner parties about his vast knowledge of etiquette, when it wasn’t doing any favours for him he saw no point in pretending to care about it. But talking to a man who barely looked old enough to be at the ‘Versity while he was trying to do his job just didn’t feel right, and by the time it had been long enough for it to be somewhat acceptable, Arlemagne had been visiting and Royston’s attentions had been captured elsewhere.

Royston somehow never found the scribbled notes the man sometimes slipped into his books, and after Royston had been called back from exile for the war, the man seemed to have disappeared from Thremedon altogether.

 

6.

When William had broken the pocket watch, Royston should have seen it for what it was. But it wasn’t until later on, pressed against Hal in a boathouse while rain beat down outside that time seemed to stand still. Hal was too young, Royston was too hurt - he couldn’t pull Hal into that. He couldn’t. 

Hal pressed his face against Royston’s shoulder, and _god_ , he was lost, and he was selfish, and he _couldn't._

Could he? Because for the first time, he seemed to know without knowing anything at all.

This time would be different. 


End file.
